Shirley (5 page)

Nobody on the dormitory road said hello to me, not the girls arm-in-arm chattering loudly, nor the ones pointedly strolling alone in poetic abstraction, nor the ones paired off with portly professorial types, chins stretched upward like birds hoping to catch morsels of predigested worm. In this world, I was invisible. If I stuck out, it was as someone not worth remembering.

Nonetheless, I moved slowly past each building on the campus,
looking for some particular sign, some marker I would know when I saw it. Eventually, I gave up and headed back down the hill, but I told myself I would return soon, look around again. I am not the smartest woman, far from it, and yet I have a certain instinct for danger.

T
HE
BOY
WAS
WAITING
in my room when I went up at the end of the evening. Exhaustion had pulled me from the lively conversation on the porch; my limbs felt heavy and tired as I climbed the stairs. He was propped against my pillows in the dark, playing his guitar.

Soft lemon light from the hallway dappled the floor. He sat up as I entered, lowered his feet off the bed, lifting the guitar with him so that he could continue strumming. Piles of our not-yet-stowed clothing sat on the single armchair. He nodded with a friendly, egalitarian air. “I wanted to ask. I bet you sing.”

“I'm very tired, Barry.”

“We play, we have a band, and Sally sings. We bet you do, too. We're pretty good, it's cool, Laurie jams with us when he comes up on weekends.”

“I don't sing,” I said, jaw clenching.

“D'you play?” He had such an open face; no one had wounded him. In this bustling house, he knew only love.

“You should be in bed.” I knew my tone was cold. I placed a hand on the doorknob, pulled the door open wider.

“It's fun. Think about it,” he said, standing, the guitar neck
held easily in his right hand. He loped down the long, book-lined hallway to his room, the one nearest his parents' domain at the front of the house. Oh, I envied him, with his safe bedroom and his long book-lined hallway and the dragonflies that blinked at his windows while crickets nattered outside—someone had taught him to play, not just guitar but with all of life's niceties. I shoved the door shut with my hip, felt the definitive click as the knob settled into place, leaving me apart and separate.

As I got into bed, I felt the bedroom walls press in on me ever so slightly, like the light, loving palms I used to stroke my pregnant belly. God, I envied those children—but at least the house approved of me.

T
EN
DAYS
LATER
, we could still be found at the Hymans' house. The semester was in full swing and our daily habits had become, in their odd way, ordered and predictable.

Breakfast. Two shifts. First twelve-year-old Barry and the two professors, soft-boiled eggs and hot cereal, lightly browned toast spread with butter and marmalade. Shirley presided infrequently; it seemed to be a meal that made itself, although all detritus was the responsibility of the ladies left behind after the last door slam. By eight-thirty, the house was awash in a thick, peaceful silence, the only sounds the light pattersteps of Shirley's cats, the ticking of the hall and kitchen clocks, and the low humming the icebox emitted.

I stayed in bed as long as I could. It was only September, but there was already a morning chill in the house that lingered until long after the sun began to glimmer at the mottled windowpanes. As I dozed, I would feel the way life purred through the house even in the stillness. With my head snug on a pillow against the wall, the house's soul breathed with me, and through me, seeping into the baby's rhythms and my own. I was sleeping better; I felt prepared for the eerie dreams when they came—I felt the house was talking
to me, that it liked me and wanted me to know. And because the house liked me, because the house and Shirley liked me, I felt calm and appreciated, safe as I had never imagined I could be.

From the bed, I glimpsed the first reddish leaves drifting slowly through the air; the crisp scent of transformation had never before been so intense, so pleasant. Coffee had begun to taste good to me again; when I smelled the fresh pot, I tossed back the quilt and pulled on my robe. Downstairs, Shirley might already be at work, but if not we would sit and talk in morning murmurs, as if the baby inside me were asleep and not to be awakened. It was evident now, a taut panel across my belly, and I found it soothing to run my hands over it. The gesture invited every stranger to recognize my condition, and I liked that; I was less shy on the baby's behalf already than I was on my own. I liked even more the way it felt to sit with Shirley, in silence, and wait—me for my baby to grow, and she for the abrupt jolt of inspiration that almost always began her workday.

When it came, whether she was at the dishes or staring out the window, cigarette in hand, or beginning to disjoint a raw chicken, she would matter-of-factly cease the activity—turn off the faucets, push back her chair, drop the knife on the counter—and leave the room. It was as if she were called, each morning, by a voice:
Now, now . . . here we go . . .

I finished the kitchen chore she'd begun and headed upstairs to wash and dress. Fred's gray argyle sweater was my outfit of choice on most mornings, worn over a light wool skirt that I told myself still looked okay, even though I could no longer pull the zipper all the way up or clasp the hook and eye at the waistband. Often, after dressing, I would fall asleep for another hour. I had never been so
tired, so absolutely to-the-bone tired, in my entire life, I would think, as I rested against the pillows. I never had to wait for sleep. But after that second drowsing, my energy was high. It was time to walk into town and do the grocery shopping. The baby would be stroked by a number of friendly hands; I didn't mind this invasive gesture, the depersonalization of me in service of the personalization of the life I carried. In fact, I found it comforting, a confirmation that my baby would matter in the world. And by extension, perhaps I would as well.

Funny how it was the life growing inside me that for the first time let me feel as if the story I was living was my own. Sometimes, watching Fred while he pored over student papers, red pen in hand, I would wonder if he had ever felt himself a hero. Even his scent was a gentle one; the slight musk at his neck in the morning was sweet to my nose. And the thoughtfulness with which he listened, the simplicity of his kindness: In his life, with Lou always present as the acerbic, confident twin, had my husband ever felt himself the star of his own story? I never asked him. The question seemed a cruel one, and he was so very kind to me. Perhaps I was wrong to be silent. But that's easy to say now.

In truth, I thought about my own mother more than my husband. I was consumed with two ideas. The first was a determination to be a far, far better mother than she had ever been to me. No screaming fights with my child's father that had the neighbors hanging out their windows. No petty theft. No standing on the street watching while a landlord tossed shabby jackets and damp towels from a third-story window, so that everyone on the block
knew precisely how paltry our belongings were, far more humiliating than that we couldn't pay our rent.

I was going to show up for every teacher appointment, help with every science project. I was going to make sure my child had laundered clothes. I was going to clean his ears with a damp washcloth, and teach him which fork to use and how to set a table (as soon as I was certain of those rules myself).

And on the other hand, my pregnancy taught me something else. I became certain that my poor, pathetic mother loved me. To the best of her abilities and at superhuman cost. For all her failures, and they were many, I found it in myself to forgive her nearly everything. I thought about writing to her almost every day. She should know that I loved her, too.

I wanted to explain all this to Shirley. She, too, had a difficult mother—hers a judgmental, conventional socialite who was embarrassed by Shirley's writings, Shirley's weight, Shirley's Jewish husband. I thought Shirley lucky, however; she'd been born into comfort and had the choice to rebel. Did she understand what a luxury that was? Working side by side with her, dusting and changing beds and folding laundry, I had the sense she knew where I'd come from, how frightened I had always been. Sometimes I believed she was the mother who was raising me all over again—to be self-confident and proud, fearless in my speech—and I was the daughter who treated her with honor, never moody or argumentative, always helpful. I knew myself to be less educated, slower on my verbal feet than Jannie and Sally, but I was certain I had them beat for domesticity.

•   •   •

I
N
THE
AFTERNOONS
, before I began to make dinner, I would amuse myself in the Hymans' library, taking down one book after another to feel the nub of the leather against my palms. Stanley told Fred there were thirty thousand volumes on their shelves. Given the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in every downstairs room and along the hallways, I did not doubt him. There were books everywhere, piled on the side tables and by everybody's beds and even stacked haphazardly on the floors. Sometimes Fred and I would find ourselves in front of a bookcase, stunned silent at the expanse of volumes. “How can I pick just one?” I asked Shirley one afternoon. She'd come in from a visit to Jannie's dorm room to drop off clean sheets and towels, and her cheeks were unusually pink from the crisp September air. Dropping the bulging pillowcase of dirty clothes on a chair near the filigreed mirror in the front hall, she came into the library, perched on the sofa arm right by where I sat cross-legged on the floor, books scattered on the edges of my skirt. “Whatever I pick there'll never be time to read them all!”

“How can you pick just one?” she echoed, selecting the nearest book. She still had her gloves on, but she opened it anyway, and began riffling the deckle-edged pages. “Pick it up and start reading. If you like it, keep it. If you don't, pick another.”

“But what will I like?” I asked. When she was cheerful and chatty, like this, I twirled up on the inside as if I were made of the dust bunnies I'd startled when I sat down. All I wanted was to keep her with me, grinning and friendly.

“Try this one,” she said. “Maybe you were meant to be a witch.”

“Me? I don't think so!” It was an oversized black book with gold lettering, the size of a photo album.
The Discoverie of Witchcraft.
“You don't actually believe this, do you? I mean, it's more of a joke, isn't it?”

Shirley pulled a few more witchcraft titles off a shelf and handed them to me.
“For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

“Shakespeare,” I said, triumphant.

She paid no attention, as if such a realization were so fundamental as to be unworthy of notice. I opened the first book, felt the coarse weave of the ancient pages. “I'll read it, I'll join your—what do they call it?—your coven.”

She looked delighted. “We'll make a spell for an easy childbirth.” For a moment I imagined she might really have her own club of witches, hold meetings out in the backyard where the old elm stump could serve as a perfect altar. I'd been told it was the bar for impromptu summer parties, but I liked this idea far better.

I laughed out loud, charmed, wishing this were possible. “A coven of housewives,” Shirley murmured, and I could see she'd begun to mull with the intensity that meant she'd slipped into her writer's mind. “Methinks we've stumbled onto a rather intriguing idea,” she said, drawing the pencil from her bun so that hair spilled to her shoulders lankly as she crossed over to her desk.

The second book was foxed and worn along the spine, caramelized tape at the top where the leather had split. I opened it carefully: published in 1931, its glossy pages were crumbling at the edges.
Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy
. I would have asked her where it came from and what she'd learned from it, but she was busy
adjusting a piece of yellow typing paper against the paper table, and I knew there was no point.

The typewriter's clacking began almost immediately. I sighed, closed the book, but not before I saw that there were pages of beautiful prints inside, of fiends sculpted onto the face of churches, oily creases along cheeks and foreheads, demons engraved or painted or drawn by hand. Would that I were an artist and could create such images. To make something beautiful: oh, that seemed the epitome of accomplishment! I ran a hand around the curve of my belly.

As I straightened the stacks of books, I imagined the house watching over us—Shirley still wearing her buffalo plaid jacket, a cigarette in hand as she hunched at the typewriter; and me, cross-legged, using books like children's blocks to erect a circle of guardians around me. I leaned back against the shelves, watched the rosy beige of the wall as it peeked out between the rows of African masks across from me. I swear the walls glowed approvingly as I lingered there,
Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy
on my lap.

I could learn witchcraft, I told myself, with a delicious rebellious thrill. Fred intended to provide our baby with material comforts, a settled place in the world. I'd not need magic, of course, any more than Shirley did. But what power it could give me. I opened the book, began to read in earnest.

•   •   •

I
REMEMBER
ONE
MORNING
, early that October, when Stanley returned home around ten or ten-thirty in order to pick up some books he needed for the reading seminar that afternoon. Shirley was in the library, deep into a nearly constant clickety-clackety
typing. The ideas were flowing. She'd exited the kitchen an hour before, without warning, when I'd picked up someone's half-eaten toast and begun to chew it with ashamed enthusiasm, saying, “I always believe in eating when I can.”

Her smile widened—I felt thrilled when I amused her so—and she nodded, and then removed her apron, repeating, “I always believe in eating when I can.” “I'm silly,” I said, and she answered, “You're a funny child.” I was inexplicably happy as I washed the dishes and dried them, replacing the bowls and plates on the shelves in their harum-scarum arrangement.

Stanley's breath was warm against my hair; he'd come up behind me, and I jumped, cheerfully exclaiming in surprise.

“Shh,” he said. “She's hard at it.”

He placed his fingers lightly on either of my forearms. Shaving cream had dried in a dot just below his right eyebrow, and I could see the black of the pores in his wide, ruddy face. I wanted to wipe my damp hands on the dish towel I held, but I did not want to know if he would grasp me harder if I moved, and so I remained as still as I could while his eyes grazed over the surface of my face.

“Beautiful Rosie,” Stanley said. I suppose that women who are often called beautiful have no idea what the rest of us feel like when we hear it, but there are no other syllables so charged. Beautiful. That word easily makes a woman so.

The typing paused. Stanley let go, moved easily past me to the kitchen counter and the pile of books he'd left there earlier.

Shirley's fingers began to tap at the typewriter once again.

“You're good for her,” he said.

“I am?”

He opened the topmost book, flipped the pages with great attention. “Last year,” he said, placing a finger on the text to mark his place, “she couldn't leave the house. At all.”

“Why? What happened? She seems so—she seems fine. To me. I mean.”

“She was frightened. Of the women in the village, of the students. She was ill. That's what it was. Dr. Toolan thinks she was depressed. But she's much better since you came here.”

“I haven't done anything,” I said.

“You give her someone safe to talk to.” I didn't respond. Stanley raised an eyebrow at my expression, went on to explain himself. “Someone who isn't thinking about the gossip here. Gossip at the college or in the village.”

“Gossip?” I asked.

He put his books under his arms and gave me a sweet, self-deprecating smile. In that moment, I could see again how a woman might find him handsome. “There's never smoke without fire, as the old saw goes.”

I waited, trying to ignore the tight way my throat closed.

“But we're fine now. It's over.”